


A Game of Life and Death

by chiiyo86



Category: Original Work
Genre: Drinking, Drugs, Kissing, M/M, Tension, strategy game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22315738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: It's Arash's first assignment in Lasshab, capital of the Osmarian Empire. If he'd known how playing a game with Sen, seventh prince of the Ushon Kingdom, would turn out for him, he would probably have abstained.
Relationships: Spy/Enemy Spy
Comments: 13
Kudos: 16
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	A Game of Life and Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [karanguni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/gifts).



> Your prompts were a lot of fun, even though the fic ended up going in its own direction. Happy Valentine's Day, I really hope you enjoy the fic!

It was believed by many in the principality of Meshil, where Arash came from, that every meeting that shaped your life was preordained by the fates. Arash believed it, in any case; he’d seen the fates at work when Salman, Meshil’s Master of Spies, had picked him up in the streets and elevated him from the gutter to his current position. He’d recognized their touch when he’d been introduced to Prince Soheil and found worthy of his first assignment abroad. And he could see them at work again upon his first meeting with Sen of the Long Clan, Seventh Prince of the Ushon Kingdom, and then later, when they kept meeting again in the most improbable circumstances. He didn’t know what that meant, good or bad, as the fates’ true purposes could only ever been divined when looking back at a finished life. He only knew that it would be foolish to resist the pull. 

They first met in Lasshab, capital of the Osmarian Empire. It was Arash’s first time in the Empire, although he’d of course studied its customs and history at length, and he had yet to get used to the hot, humid atmosphere of the city. In the severe black garbs of the Ethari merchant he was posing at, Arash was suffocating. He longed to undo at least one of the two buttons that cinched the collar of his jacket around his neck, but for an Ethari man of his supposed status, this would be the equivalent of dancing naked in the streets for another culture and could not be entertained unless he wanted to blow his cover. Arash had done meticulous work to perfect his character: he’d powdered his face to lighten his complexion, had grown a thick beard to cover his face, and then dyed it to hide the few red hairs that mixed with the black ones in his natural beard and betrayed his Eusian blood, had trimmed his eyebrows and cut his hair indecently short. He pitched his voice lower than his usual, shortened his vowels and rolled his _r_ s to imitate the Ethari accent, altered his gait and hunched his shoulders to mitigate his height. Outrageous disguises weren’t necessary, Salman had taught him. People only ever remembered a few traits from you after a meeting; alter those, and you became a completely different person. 

Since he’d arrived in Lasshab, Arash had spent almost every night in gambling dens. They were supposedly illegal since the current emperor’s predecessor had gone on a moral crusade and forbidden them across the Empire, but gambling was such a beloved pastime of the Empire’s elite that it was the kind of interdiction no one bothered to enforce. Arash didn’t care for gambling, and especially not for the sort of games favored in Lasshab that left way too much to chance, but this was where someone of his wealth was supposed to be, where he would make the most connections and gather the most intelligence. The den he was attending on the night he met Sen was named the ‘The Labyrinth’ and was a very select sort of place, where one could only enter after being vouched for by a known member. Arash’s patrons were Lord and Lady Hati—the husband was a big name in the Empire’s spice trade, which was openly why Arash, under his identity as the Ethari merchant Larth Arslan, had been courting the couple. In reality, he was more interested in Lady Hati, as she was the emperor’s grand-niece and more involved in court politics than she let on. Arash was playing a game of luattam with Lady and Lord Hati, as well as a couple of their friends, when Sen entered the game room. 

Thinking back later on that first night, Arash sometimes wondered if it was a trick of his memory that made him remember that entrance as such a noteworthy moment. He thought he remembered that his attention had been immediately focused on Sen, even ignorant as he’d been then of the way that their destinies would become entwined—after all, Sen wouldn’t know how to make a discreet entrance if his life depended on it. The door being thrust open momentarily disturbed the plumes of smoke from the peyeome leaves that most of the players were smoking. The walls in the game room were covered with dark blue and purple hangings, and the flames of the candles gave off a muted lighting that made the bright spots of colors from Sen and his retinue all the more shocking. 

Arash had heard of Sen before and even though he’d never met him, he had no trouble recognizing him—the youngest of Ong the Mighty’s children, that the king had sired already late in life, Sen was also the most foolish, the most irresponsible, and the less likely to end up on the throne out of the seven princesses and princes. The ‘extraneous one’ or the ‘afterthought’ were some of the nicknames Arash had heard from vicious gossips. Arash was wary of rumors by nature and by profession, but as he examined the young man who stumbled inside the room, already visibly drunk despite the early evening hour, he thought that those specific rumors might not be unfounded. The young prince’s frame was draped in robes of heavy bright blue and yellow brocade—probably stifling in the heat, Arash thought with some sympathy—and strands of black hair had escaped from the top bun he wore as per the traditional hair style favored by Ushon men. He had an oval face, high cheekbones and very dark almond eyes that flickered as he took in who was inside the room, before he grinned broadly and opened his arms, as though welcoming the sudden attention on himself. 

“I’ve been told that this is where we have fun in Lasshab!” he exclaimed. “Please tell me that I haven’t failed in my quest.”

He’d said it in Ozarhi, the dialect spoken by the Osmarian elite. His accent was thick, but understandable, and his grammar was impeccable—unsuprising, since Ushon had shared a large border with the Empire since the country had lost the war against the Osmarians a decade ago. He was accompanied by two young men and two young women, dressed in blues, pinks and yellows, who were giggling and elbowing each other, all of them very obviously drunk too. 

Lady Hati sniffed, but before she could open her mouth for what Arash knew would be a scathing rebuke, an attendant from The Labyrinth in dark blue livery had slipped behind Sen’s elbow. In a soft, diffident voice, he said, “You need someone to vouch for you to be able to play, my lord.”

Sen blinked at him, looking as though he wondered where the man had come from. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “Do you know who I am?”

His tone wasn’t imperious, but rather dumbfounded, as if it were his first time encountering someone not cowed by his status and he didn’t know how to handle this sudden paradigm shift. Was it his first time leaving his father’s court? From what Arash knew, he should have been almost in his mid-twenties, only a few years younger than Arash himself. 

“Nevertheless, you can’t play without someone else vouching for you,” the attendant replied patiently. 

“What a tedious rule,” Sen said in the same tone of offended surprise. “My lords and ladies, will anyone do me the immense favor of vouching for me?”

There were four tables in the room, including the one Arash was playing at. The players exchanged awkward or openly disdainful looks, until Lady Mahar, one of Lady Hati’s friends playing at their table, said airily, “Oh, aren’t you all heartless. Let the poor boy have some fun! I’ll vouch for him and his friends, Bazam. They can play at our table.”

“Mala!” Lady Hati hissed between her teeth.

“What?” Lady Mahar replied in a low voice. “He’s pretty and he’s the son of a king. What more could you ask of a man? It can’t hurt to make friends with him.”

“He’s _Ushon_. The Ushon aren’t of any consequence, now.”

Sen was making his way to their table at the same moment, but if he heard what Lady Hati had said, then he didn’t let it show. With five added people at the table, they had to bring in more chairs and Sen’s chair was squeezed between Lady Mahar’s and Arash’s own chair. They were sitting so close that Arash could smell the pungent odor of rice wine on the young prince’s breath.

“My name is Sen,” the prince said simply to Arash, as if he hadn’t acted stunned one moment ago at anyone not knowing who he was. “Prince of Ushon.”

“I’m Larth Arslan from Ethar,” Arash replied with a polite nod.

Sen joined his hands together and bowed in an Ushon greeting. “Pleased to meet you, Larth Arslan,” he said. “You’re Ethari? Huh.”

Unidentified unease crept up Arash’s spine. “Is there anything wrong with me being Ethari, your Highness?” 

“Oh, no, of course not.” Sen addressed Arash a blinding smile. “Forgive me, sir. I have never met an Ethari man before. It _is_ true that you dress all in black!”

“Merchants do, at least,” Arash said. Then, because this was what an Ethari man would say, he added, “Colors are frivolous and frivolity isn’t conductive to business.”

Sen’s eyes widened and his cheeks puffed as he contained a laugh. “What a—strange opinion. But where are my manners? My sister would be aghast at seeing me being so rude to you. Will you forgive me and help me figure out the rules of this game?”

He gestured at the center of the table, where someone had just thrown five short wooden sticks engraved with symbols—the other players had resumed their game without waiting for Arash and Sen to finish their conversation. Arash was a beginner at the game himself and did his best to try and explain to the prince what the different symbol combinations meant. His best effort at explaining ended with the prince frowning in confusion, though.

“How can anyone keep all of this straight?” he complained. “This is much too complicated for me. Would you mind accepting me as a partner? I feel like I would get it more easily if someone played with me for a while.”

“As you wish, your Highness.”

The games of luattam Arash had played before were generally conducted in an atmosphere of intense concentration and meditative smoking. There was disappointedly little conversation during the games, but Arash kept playing them because this was how you connected to people with whom you could have conversations with later on. As soon as Sen and his companions started playing, though, the game became a lot livelier at Arash’s table. Part of it was the bottle that Sen conjured out of one of his large sleeves and started passing around, but the rest was the prince’s personality. Arash observed him as the evening progressed, saw how he managed to melt away the players’ initial hostility, even Lady Hati’s, through his smiles, his jokes, his borderline rude comments that he immediately apologized for. Arash couldn’t tell whether his behavior was calculated or not, but at least it was effective. Laughter burst out freely and tongues ran with even more freedom. 

“Trade is really another form of war,” Lord Hati was saying. 

He was a generally quiet man next to his more outspoken wife, but the alcohol had him talking more than Arash had heard him do since the beginning of their acquaintance. Arash had tried to always drink a lot less than he pretended to whenever he took a sip from the bottle, but Sen’s Ushon wine was potent and Arash could tell he was affected at the way the world had started to get fuzzy at the edges. He was still fully self-possessed, but it took extra-focus to keep himself from giving way to the fuzziness. 

“I agree with you, Lord Hati,” he said, weighing carefully his words. “Ethar has not waged a war in over fifty years and our country is doing well for itself.”

“Violence is so uncivilized,” Lady Mahar said. 

“I don’t know,” Sen said. He’d just brought the bottle to his mouth and it hit the table with a dull _thud_ when he put it down. “A few thousand swords have a way of being persuasive, don’t you think? Take the war between my country and the Empire, for example—the fact that the Osmarian troops were more than three times our numbers certainly had something to do with why we were crushed. I mean no offense to everyone at this table, of course. We Ushon people can take defeat gracefully.” He raised his bottle as a toast to the rest of the table and managed to make it look both mocking and sincere.

Awkwardness blew over the inebriated group. Arash would have bet that there was no one sitting at this table that didn’t look down on Sen for being a prince of no consequence from a country the Empire had mowed down in recent history, even as they were taken by his charm. To have it thrown back in their faces so brazenly shamed them, and Osmarian nobles tended to react pretty vivaciously to shame. 

“Your country might not have lost if the Eusian principalities hadn’t been too busy squabbling with each other to respect the alliance they’d made with Ushon,” he said before anyone else could react. It was his own country that he was exposing to criticism, but at least it would make it more unlikely for the others to figure out that he actually came from the principalities. 

“True, that,” Sen said, tipping his bottle to him. 

“The Eusian military forces amount to very little,” said Lord Bashir, a large man with a booming voice, who occupied the now mostly honorific position of Master of the Armory in the Empire. “Even when they stop fighting with each other for more than five minutes, they don’t have enough troops to weigh much against the Empire.”

It was on Arash’s tongue to protest and bring up the Eusian military expertise, their skill with archery, but of course it would do nothing but draw the wrong kind of attention on himself. 

“They have their diamond mines, though,” he pointed out. “Well, Ospil does.”

“Which brings me to my original point,” Lord Hati said. “War is a barbaric tradition of the past. All the countries between the Langlan Sea and the Voiceless Tops have been at peace for twelve years now, and it’s trade agreements that will make or break nations.”

Arash had been keeping an eye on Lady Hati, curious of how she would react to the conversation, and he saw her snort softly and do an aborted eyeroll at her husband’s words. Was Salman, Arash’s master, right about the Osmarian plans for a new war? Since he’d arrived in Lasshab, Arash had made frustratingly little progress on the topic. War was an almost taboo subject in polite society, never mind that the Empire had only been able to become what it was now by carving into the neighboring nations. For the first time in weeks, Arash felt like he might be onto something important.

The evening drew to an end soon after that conversation and the group of players disbanded. Arash, who’d been focusing on Lady Hati, saw her put a folded slip of paper in Lord Bashir’s hand. The gesture happened swiftly as they passed each other when exiting the room and would have been unnoticeable had Arash not been looking for something like this. His heart started to beat quicker at the prospect of finally finding something worthy of reporting to Salman, but he was careful not to let anything show on his face. He wanted that note. Getting it would be his first true success in Lasshab. 

He saw Lord Bashir slip the note in his pocket. Needing a distraction, Arash dropped a coin from his purse on the floor. The resulting clink caught Lord Bashir’s attention, who turned his head.

“Ah, sorry, my lord,” Arash said. “I think I dropped a coin.”

Other people were leaving the room and Arash pretended someone had bumped into him as he bent down to pick up his coin, bumping in his turn against Lord Bashir.

“My apologies,” he said. “I can’t see it. Would you…?”

“I’ll help,” Lord Bashir said a little impatiently. While he crouched down, Arash’s fingers found their way inside the pocket the note had disappeared into, and he used his body to conceal what he was doing from others’ prying eyes. 

“Here you go,” Lord Bashir said, giving him back his coin. “Have a good night, sir.”

“Thank you, my lord. I wish you the same.”

Lord Bashir had left the room before the end of Arash’s civility, probably in a hurry to read the note Lady Hati had given him. Arash felt the same way, his nerves jingling from excitement. Lady Hati seeking secret communication with Lord Bashir could only have something to do with the man’s access to weapons—from the intelligence Arash had gathered, Lord Bashir exclusively favored men when it came to romantic or sexual encounters, so he wasn’t having an affair with Lady Hati. The note Arash had stolen would certainly prove to be most informative, but as he was about to pass the door and leave, he was stopped by a voice. 

“Are you heading home already, sir?” Sen asked with a broad smile. “The night is still young. I hear that we can rent rooms here for private games. What do you say?”

‘Private games’ were often a euphemism for sex, here in Lasshab. Was the young prince messing with Arash or was he really that clueless? Was he truly an idiotic Ushon prince, or had he been sent by someone else? Salman’s theory was that the Empire wished to swallow up what remained of the Ushon kingdom. But with how loudly Emperor Imre had claimed that the Empire was a force for peace this past decade, the only way he could declare war on Ushon was by forcing the kingdom to attack first—or by making up an Ushon attack. Either way, it was all too likely that the Empire had allied itself with people inside Ushon, taking advantage of the current power struggle between the king’s offspring, probably offering help to get on the throne along with promises for when Ushon would become subservient to the Empire. On whose behalf might Sen have come to Lasshab? The king’s, one of his siblings’? Did he want to stop the war or help it along? Declining Sen’s offer and going back to his lodgings would be the safer option, but if Sen was a spy too, it would be useful to discover who he worked for—and whether he’d seen what Arash had just done. 

“Was it presumptuous of me to offer?” Sen asked. His eyes were twinkling in a way that let Arash know that at least he understood the implications of what he was proposing.

“Not at all,” Arash replied, having made a decision. “But call me Larth, your Highness. If we’re about to play a private game, I think you’re entitled to my first name.”

“In that case, you’ll have to call me Sen. It would be silly for me to call you by your first name while you keep addressing me with my title.”

For a moment, Arash was almost swayed by the friendliness in the young prince’s voice. Was he reading too much into Sen’s behavior? Was he really just a prince out for a bit of fun? 

_Well, I guess I’ll just have to find out._

—-

The rooms for private games were smaller, but also a lot cozier than the regular game rooms—from the couches draped with richly embroidered silk fabric, to the small cabinet discreetly embedded in the wall that contained bottles of several rare alcohols, and the cigarette holders and ash-collecting cups for those who wished to smoke, everything in the room served to remind the guests that it had been intended for another kind of game than the ones the establishment openly advertised.

There _was_ a table, though, a beautifully inlayed one, decorated with abstract flower patterns in dark and honey-colored woods typical of recent Ozarhi fashion. Sen conversed quickly with the members of his posse—he spoke in Ushon, but from what Arash heard of their conversation, he was just telling them to find somewhere to entertain themselves while he played here. He then addressed one of The Labyrinth’s attendants, asking for something in a voice too low for Arash to understand him. Arash just had the time to get nervous about what the prince might be asking for before the attendant came back with a square-patterned wooden board and two wooden boxes.

“Do play poh?” Sen asked. “I didn’t think I could find it here in Lasshab, but this place appears to be true to its reputation.”

Arash did play poh, but the chances that an Ethari merchant would know how to play this typically Ushon, highly complex strategy game were very low. “I’ve heard of it but have never had the opportunity to learn how to play, your—Sen.” It couldn’t hurt to make a show of how uncomfortable he found the lack of formality.

Sen laughed, as though he found Arash’s awkwardness highly amusing. “I’ll just have to teach you, then.”

He sat at the table, placing the board at the center of it, then opened one of the boxes and proceeded to empty it from the square engraved tiles it contained. 

“I do hear it’s a very complex game,” Arash said as he sat down across Sen at the table. “Weren’t you complaining earlier about how complicated luattam’s rules were?”

Sen laughed again, his eyes sparkling, and the sound was so infectious that Arash couldn’t contain a smile. “It’s true, then, what they say about Ethari merchants’ ruthlessness. You don’t mince your words. Well, I didn’t pretend to be a good player, but being raised at the Ushon court means that I couldn’t escape learning it and playing it regularly throughout my whole childhood. As those games were the only quality moments I got to spend with my royal father, I’ve grown to be fond of the game even though I’m mediocre at it.”

The words had a surprising ring of truth to them. Arash silently considered the prince as he placed half of the wooden tiles over the board. The candles fixed on the walls gave off a flickering light that created shadows underlining Sen’s deeply dark eyes. The prince was quietly smiling to himself, as though entertained by an inside joke, while he arranged the tiles with elegant, long-fingered hands whose nails looked like polished stones. His gestures were deft, precise—a little too precise, Arash noted, for someone who by all means should have been blind drunk. 

“Poh is a game of life or death,” Sen said. He pressed the tip of his fingers on the central tile, which was engraved with two red interwoven flowers, and looked up at Arash. His eyelashes cast elongated shadows on the curves of his cheekbones. “I’m fairly certain it’s been invented to help Ushon nobles curb their bloodthirst. It helps to have a way to eviscerate each other that doesn’t involve the use of a sword.”

“I thought all the princes and princesses were also taught in the Ushon art of the sword,” Arash said.

“Oh yes,” Sen said airily, the previous gravity vanishing from his voice as though it had never been there. “We certainly do, and I’m even worse at it than I am at playing poh. But blood stains even marble floors, I guess. By the way, do you want to try whatever alcohol this fine establishment has left for us? I feel like it would a shame to leave any of those bottles uncorked!”

Arash started to protest that he’d had more than enough to drink already, but the prince was already trotting up to the cabinet, catching his sleeve onto one of the couches’ arms and stumbling, then righting himself with a giggle. He buried his head in the cabinet, taking out various bottles, uncorking them and sniffing their content. Arash still couldn’t tell whether he was watching a masterful interpretation of drunk behavior, or if the prince was truly intoxicated and was just so used to arranging tiles on a poh board that he could do it even in an altered state. 

“Ooh, this is very good wine from the Canoram Plains, if I’m not mistaken. Lovely color. I feel dizzy just from smelling it. Excellent.”

The cabinet also contained glasses, and Sen brought two glasses and a bottle back to the game table. Over Arash’s protests, he filled both glasses and handed one out to him. 

“I’m going to think that you’re trying to get me drunk,” Arash said, accepting the glass with a sigh.

“Who says I’m not?” Sen said laughingly, the rim of his glass pressed against his lower lip as he was about to take a sip from it. “Maybe I want to have my ways with you.”

Arash wasn’t an innocent by any means, even when it came to relationships with other men, and he’d accepted Sen’s invitation to a private game fully aware of where it might lead him. Yet, the words, or maybe just the way Sen had said them, caused a sudden flush of blood to ignite his face. He hid it by bowing his head into his drink, feeling very foolish. He’d drunk too much already and it wouldn’t improve the swimming confusion in his head to drink more, but he needed to regain his composure. It was a good thing in his business to pretend that you’d let your opponent get to you, but it was a bad thing to really let it happen. Arash felt like he was much too close from the latter for comfort.

“The game,” he said. The one sip of Canoram wine he’d drunk was potent enough to mute some of the apprehension he’d been feeling. “You said you would teach it to me.”

“Right,” Sen said. “I’ve never had to explain it to anyone before, so bear with me. As I said, this game is about life and death. There are many ways to die and very few ways to survive. Open the box with your tiles, I’ll show you how to place them on the board.”

Arash opened his box and got the tiles out, then followed Sen’s instructions on how to place them on the board, sometimes misplacing them on purpose. Their hands met over the board when Sen corrected him and their fingers brushed—Arash let it happen, because this was as much part of the game they were playing as moving poh tiles was. He wished he could control the way his heart stuttered every time it happened. The alcohol burned like a fire pit inside his stomach and he dearly regretted that last drink. What had he gotten himself into? Whoever Sen was working for, if anyone, maybe Arash should’ve just left it alone for the moment, gone back to his lodgings, read the note he’d just stolen and prepared his report to Salman. 

“You’re looking really deep in thoughts,” Sen commented, candle lights dancing in his eyes. “Are my explanations so confusing?”

Sen’s explanations were a little muddled, but easy enough to follow, although it might have been because Arash already knew the rules. “I think I’m ready to try a real game,” Arash said. “Although you’ll have to be patient with me.”

“Of course. I want you to spend an enjoyable moment with me. When I was a child learning how to play poh, my tutor used to hit my fingers with a stick every time I made a wrong move, but I don’t think I’ll use the same method with you.”

Arash let out a startled laugh. “Yes, let’s not do that.”

They started playing, and Arash was careful not to let his mastery of the game show too much, only ever using moves that Sen had showed him and inserting some beginner’s mistakes here and there. Although he’d learned it quite late in life, he was good enough to recognize others’ skill. He could tell that Sen was a solid enough player that he could adapt his game to teach rather than to crush. It might have been modesty that had made him describe himself as a mediocre player—or it might have been that he was purposefully understating himself. Following that line of thought, it was all too possible that he wasn’t as poor at swordplay as he pretended to be. The Labyrinth didn’t let its players come in with weapons on them, but Arash had a thin blade hidden inside the lining of this jacket’s sleeve and if Sen was of his own kind, then he most likely would be similarly prepared. 

“You catch on quickly,” Sen murmured, looking at the tile that Arash had just moved.

Had Arash betrayed himself with a too skilled move? “I have to, in my line of work,” he replied evenly. “Also, I’ve had a good teacher.”

Sen snorted a laugh as he slid one of his tiles over the board. “Careful,” he said. “Flattery goes to my head quicker than wine. Or so says my sister.”

That second mention of his sister caught Arash’s attention. Had he been talking about the same sister both times? Might she be the one that Sen spied for? From what Arash knew, the Ushon king had four daughters. Nhek, the oldest, was also the Crown Princess, so it was doubtful that she would be interested in a secret alliance with the Empire against her own country. Aek, the second one, was quiet and seemingly only interested in art and literature, but by all accounts, the other two, Song and Nourn, were quite ambitious and remote from the throne, being the fifth and sixth children. Was it more likely that Sen would be close to Nhek, old enough to be his mother, or to Nourn, who, with a seven-year gap between them, was the only one of Sen’s siblings that he might have played with as a child? 

“Your sister sounds stern,” Arash said. “You said earlier that she would be aghast at your manners.”

“Did I say that? I guess I might have. I’m not used to people paying such close attention to my words.”

“Again, close attention to my interlocutor’s words is a skill I’ve had to develop for my work. If you have a stern sister, then I have a stern father. He wouldn’t have tolerated me to be less than the best at what we do.”

Like all the best lies, this one was almost entirely true—Arash’s father hadn’t been Ethari, but he’d been a rich merchant and a strict father, at least before he’d killed himself over the considerable debts he’d accumulated from bad business choices. Arash let enough of his genuine bitterness show for the prince’s benefit. 

Sen took a sip from his drink and leaned back in his chair, a smile playing on his lips. “You’re unlike anyone I’ve met before, Larth,” he said.

 _Blast_ , Arash thought. It wasn’t good for someone like him to be too noteworthy. The note that he’d slipped in his pocket felt like it was burning a hole in it. He wished he’d had the time to hide it better. He wished he could think of a way to get out of this conversation, out of this room, without looking too suspicious. He felt like he was dancing to the prince’s tune, a music from a foreign instrument that he wasn’t sure he could follow well.

“How so?” he asked, drinking again from his glass to force nonchalance into his demeanor. He was sweating so hard under his collar that the jacket’s fabric was soaked through. “I don’t remember having done anything remarkable in front of you.”

“It’s just that I’m used to two sorts of people,” Sen said with a gracious shrug. “The ones who try to ingratiate themselves with me because I’m a prince, and the ones who think that I’m an embarrassment to the royal family. Since you don’t seem to belong to either of those categories, you’re interesting to me.”

“Well, I have nothing to gain from your acquaintance, but nothing to lose either.”

“Exactly! It’s refreshing. All right!” Sen slammed his now empty glass on the table. “What would you say of making this game more interesting?”

“In what way?”

Sen leaned over the table. “For every tile that one of us manages to kill, the other has to give him a kiss.”

Arash had been expecting something like this since they’d entered the private room, and felt no shock, no surprise. His mind whirled madly, though, even as he contemplated the prince with as much outward calm as he could muster. How far was he willing to let this go? He needed to decide it right then. His eyes flicked to Sen’s lips; the prince saw it and those lips stretched into a smile.

“Interested?” he said.

“Tempted,” Arash said. “I wouldn’t have come in this room with you if I wasn’t. I assume that you know what private game rooms are the most used for in Lasshab.”

“Yes!” Sen said, eyes lighting up like a child’s. “What a delicious custom! I have found Lasshab to be infinitely more fun than Quiliang so far. Do you consent, then?”

It wasn’t that Arash didn’t want to. No, the problem was rather that he _did_ want to, but if he let Sen get too close, if he got too distracted, the note in his pocket would be vulnerable. Whatever was on that note, Arash would bet anything that it would alter the fate of Ushon—and the fate of Meshil and the other principalities, which would get stuck between two hell fires in case of a war opposing Ushon and the Empire. Arash rubbed his hands together, trying to bring back some feeling in them. He’d never had Canoram wine before, but he was surprised at the effect it was having on him. His thought process had gone from too fast to too slow, like a river getting frozen in the winter, and it took all of his will power to fight the sluggishness and try to stay on task. 

“All right,” he said. “A kiss for a kill. This sounds fair.”

“The fairest of all trades. I knew someone of your profession would appreciate it.”

Arash had prepared to be the first to lose—he was supposed to be the beginner out of the two of them and had taken pains to play way below his usual level, not to mention that he was considerably addled from drinking. A loss would mean that he would be the one to go to Sen, which suited him perfectly well. He wanted to be the one in control of the kiss. It was a shock then, when barely a few moves later, Sen was the one to lose a tile.

“Oh, my,” Sen said, using his sleeve to fan his face. “It looks like the first kiss will be mine.”

“Does it matter very much?” Arash said, even as he cursed the prince in his mind. He rubbed his hands again, more forcefully this time; he could barely feel them now. “I thought the point was to kiss, whoever initiates it.”

“True. I do love a game where every move is a win. But please, let me enjoy my consolation prize.” 

“Of course.”

As Sen stood up from his chair, Arash’s heart started to pound against his ribs, hard enough to be painful. Cold sweat broke out over his entire body, slight tremors running through it. For the first time, Arash wondered whether the discomfort he was feeling, the way his mind was muddled and his body felt numb, could be explained by something other than the alcohol and tension from the situation. When Sen leaned over him, Arash tried to straighten up on his chair and raise his face to meet him but found out with increasing alarm that he had trouble moving.

“Ah,” Sen said, pressing the tip of his fingers against the edge of Arash’s jaw. They felt warm on his clammy skin. “It looks like it’s finally starting to take effect. I’d hoped you would drink more. Don’t worry.” He brought his face very close to Arash’s and the tickle of his warm breath could be felt against Arash’s lips. “With how little you drank from your glass, the paralysis will dissipate very quickly.”

 _What?_ The thought was cut short when Sen pressed his lips against Arash’s mouth, a soft warm press, accompanied by the bitter flavor of the Canoram wine. Sen sucked in a breath, then kissed Arash again, more greedily, the wet tip of his tongue drawing a line over Arash’s lower lip, the silk of his hair caressing the side of Arash’s face. At the same time, one of his hands burrowed itself in Arash’s pocket, the one where the note was hidden. Arash’s lips and face burned from an internal fire, his pulse throbbing in his temples, at the surface of his skin. He poured every bit of strength and focus he had left into moving the fingers of his right hand, just a little, just enough to reach the blade in his sleeve. Slowly, slowly, he managed to find the thin handle and pushed it so the tip of the blade would tear through the velvet fabric of his jacket and prick his finger.

The jolt of pain had the desired effect of bringing some feeling back to his hand. With another effort, he pushed the blade out and blindly shoved his hand forward. He met resistance and Sen yelped, leaping backward. Arash only had the time to catch sight of a bloody spot on the blue silk of his robe before the sharp and cool edge of a blade was pressed against his neck.

“That was careless of me,” Sen said.

Arash’s eyes were the only part of his face he could move at the moment; when he looked up, he saw Sen gazing down at him, his cheeks flushed, his head surrounded by a halo of dark hair. His expression had cooled, his smile had died down, and he looked more serious than Arash had seen him act for the whole evening, his face like the carved marble of a statue. 

“I don’t know who you’re working for,” Sen said, “but my mother was Ethari. You’re good, but I can tell that your accent isn’t genuine.”

Arash licked his lips and forced them to move. Fat drops of sweat, very much like tears, were trickling down his face. “Wh-who—?” he managed to rasp.

Sen tilted his head. His right hand, the one that was holding his blade, kept it steady against Arash’s neck—it was pressed tight against his skin, but not enough to break it. “Who… Oh, you want to know on whose behalf I’m spying? I like you, Larth—or whatever your name is—but not _that_ much.”

“The—the war—” Arash groaned in frustration at being unable to articulate a full sentence. What had Sen put in his drink? He’d said it would wear off quickly, but it was a cold comfort to Arash in his current vulnerable position. “Will you—stop it?”

“Oh.” Sen’s hand lowered and the flat part of the cold blade slid against Arash’s neck. “Where are you from? Othya? One of the principalities? Don’t worry. Whatever this note says, I’ll stop it. I won’t let the Empire gobble up my country.”

His hand withdrew and the blade disappeared inside his sleeve as quickly as it had appeared. He joined his hands and bowed at the waist, saluting Arash. The formality made Arash want to laugh and cry at the same time. Did the prince really need to compound his humiliation with fake politeness? Arash was already mentally composing his report to Salman, trying to think of a way to explain how the prince had managed to get the better of him despite his wariness. It would have been almost better to not have seen it coming at all. The thought of how disappointed Salman would be in him hurt more than any wound.

“I wish I knew your real name,” Sen said, “though I know that it’s too much to ask. My deepest thanks for the game.”

He’d said the last sentence in Ushon, as though he’d known that Arash would understand him, or maybe not caring whether he did or not. He walked past Arash, briefly resting his hand on Arash’s shoulder and then leaving the room, gently clicking the door shut behind him. 

It took Arash the better part of an hour to regain sufficient mastery of his limbs that he could leave the room on his own power. As he made his way back to his lodgings through the streets of Lassham, which were brimming with nightlife, he couldn’t help but obsessively review the whole evening, wondering on what words his Ethari accent had failed, at what moment Sen had managed to slip something in his drink, thinking of the million things he should have done differently. At least, if Sen had been telling the truth, his country wouldn’t suffer from his failure. 

He didn’t know if Sen would tell anyone else that he’d figured out that Arash was a spy, but he couldn’t risk it—compromised as he was, he couldn’t stay in Lasshab and continue his mission. He was severely reprimanded when he went back to Ribam, but through hard work and increasing devotion to his country, he succeeded in maintaining his position.

He didn’t think after Lasshab that he would come across Sen ever again, at least not in a close and personal manner. But the fates, of course, had their own plans that no one could account for.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally outlined a much longer fic that went over several of Arash and Sen's meetings... but when I saw how long it was taking me to write just that first meeting, I ended up deciding that I should focus on that so the fic could be concluded in a satisfying manner. Hopefully, it worked. :)


End file.
